Draining

Something nice happened today.

A parcel arrived even though I knew perfectly well that I hadn’t ordered anything. We are broke at the moment, and so I am very determinedly not looking on Amazon at all, because even just thinking about their website seems to cost me a tenner every time. 

I looked at it curiously. It was heavy and square, and turned out to be two books. 

It was two recipe books, written by Jamie Oliver, and sent by a friend from school, who thought that I might like them.

She posted them to me even though she lives in Germany, which is miles and miles away.

I thought this was exceptionally kind. I have not seen my friend since our teenage years, we are in touch on the magical world of Facebook. In fact the thing that I remember best about her was that when she was five she was the smallest girl in the school, and all the bigger girls used to compete to be allowed to look after her when we played House, as if she were a doll. I don’t recall that she much liked being looked after, but it didn’t matter, we looked after her anyway, sometimes from a distance if she was determined to run off. 

I was very pleased indeed with the books, and became instantly distracted from the things I was supposed to be doing and started investigating how I might make gnocchi.

There wasn’t a picture of gnocchi, so I still don’t know what it is. I will have to follow the instructions and see what happens. It hadn’t been invented when I did Domestic Science at school. 

I couldn’t make gnocchi today, even if it turns out to be a type of sandwich. We were busy in the garden. 

Mark dug yet another colossal drain-related hole. 

The garden is beginning to look like the crater-pitted surface of the moon, apart from the worms. 

He dug out the drain from next to the back door and planted it in the hole beside his new shed.

It turns out that drains are enormous things. This one had a pipe, and a bit that looked like an enormous earthenware sink trap, and a flap to stop rats swimming in it. 

He faffed about a great deal making it level.

I filled the wheelbarrow with soil, of which we still have absolute cartloads, despite taking sacks and sacks of it over to the field.

I built a new flower bed in the front garden, along the side of the path.

I was very pleased with it when I had finished it, except I got distracted then and forgot to plant anything in it. I shall have to do that tomorrow. 

I went to help Mark in the back. 

He had installed the drain, and discovered that the ancient loo had used to be in that spot, which was where we thought that it had probably been. He said that it had been the sort with a hole in the ground, a bit like we had in France, which was why there were no drains to it, but that the hole had been filled in with stones and rubble which was why the garden drains so well. I was pleased about this. We have some exciting floods in the Lake District, but so far none in our actual house. 

Mark thought that it was important to preserve this feature. Not being flooded is pretty good. 

After that he was going to put a new concrete floor in his shed-to-be, so we dug it all out and made it level. Well, fairly level, and Mark did most of the digging. I helped a bit when he started to complain about backache.

Then we put a sheet of plastic over it all, and I got everything ready for work whilst he laid concrete.

We have now got a shed with a floor. We kept the dogs in the house, and so it is a pristine floor, smooth and flat and level.

Even if we are not in the conservatory by Christmas, we will at least be in the shed.

We can have gnocci for Christmas dinner.